Time to Repeal the Disastrous 1965 Immigration Actby Selwyn Duke, January 17, 2018

Question: If someone sells you on something with false advertising and it does the exact opposite of what was promised, are you not entitled to return the product and get a refund? In fact, if the product caused you harm, should you not in addition be compensated for damages?

Now consider that when Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) was pushing the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 (S.500) on the Senate floor, he said, “First, our cities will not be flooded with a million immigrants annually.”

Actually, he was right. We now absorb more than a million immigrants annually.

Kennedy next stated, “Under the proposed bill, the present level of immigration remains substantially the same.”

The average yearly number of immigrants prior to ’65 was 250,000. Even under Common Core math, that’s still less than one million-plus.

Kennedy also claimed, “Secondly, the ethnic mix of this country will not be upset.” His brother Senator Robert Kennedy (D-NY) chimed in, “In fact, the distribution of limited quota immigration can have no significant effect on the ethnic balance of the United States.”

Yet as the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) wrote in 2015, “In 1965, whites of European descent comprised 84 percent of the U.S. population, while Hispanics accounted for 4 percent and Asians for less than 1 percent. Fifty years on, 62 percent of the U.S. population is white, 18 percent is Hispanic, and 6 percent is Asian. By 2065, just 46 percent of the U.S. population will be white, the Hispanic share will rise to 24 percent, Asians will comprise 14 percent — and the country will be home to 78 million foreign born, according to Pew projections.”

Kennedy again: “Contrary to the charges in some quarters, S.500 will not inundate America with immigrants from any one country or area, or the most populated and economically deprived nations of Africa and Asia. In the final analysis, the ethnic pattern of immigration under the proposed measure is not expected to change as sharply as the critics seem to think.”

Since the 1965 act took effect, 85 to 90 percent of our immigrants have hailed from the Third World. Moreover, the MPI tells us, “Compared to almost entirely European immigration under the national-origins system [prior to ‘65], flows since 1965 have been more than half Latin American and one-quarter Asian.”

Kennedy summed up saying that the charges he was refuting above were “highly emotional, irrational, and with little foundation in fact. They are out of line with the obligations of responsible citizenship.”

Of course, they were actually something else: true.

In fact, it’s hard to imagine a short statement containing more untruths than the real Lyin’ Ted packed into his immigration-bill defense. It’s not just that he was wrong — it’s that the outcomes were the precise opposite of what he’d promised. If Kennedy had been a doctor performing a medical procedure, he’d have been sued out of the business. If he’d been an auto manufacturer and his pet bill a car model, he’d have had to issue a recall.

So can we finally recall this horrible 1965 immigration act? Note that even Kennedy tacitly admitted that the act’s ultimate outcomes are undesirable. He didn’t say, “Flooding the country with one million people per year from economically deprived areas and radically changing the ethnic mix of the U.S. is great. Let’s do it!” He passionately claimed those things wouldn’t happen.

By the way, Kennedy punctuated his prevaricative defense by saying that the charges against the immigration bill “breed hate of our heritage.” Of course, the balkanization the immigration bill bred is part of the reason our heritage is now so hated.

Speaking of hatred, much is currently directed at President Trump because on Thursday he questioned why we have so much immigration from impoverished nations such as Haiti, as opposed to more newcomers from Norway. Since this raised many leftists’ ire and with my being the reasonable man I am, I propose a compromise: No immigrants from the Third World or the Old World — no immigration, period.

With a 324 million population, we have enough people. With 95 million not in the labor force and robots taking over low-skilled jobs, we don’t need more workers. With America being balkanized, we don’t need more diversity. So what does today’s immigration provide?

Oh, yeah — Democrat voters.

Depending on the group, 70 to 90 percent of Third World immigrants vote Democrat after being naturalized. Leftists don’t in principle love immigrants or immigration, but electoral domination — and importing foreigners to achieve it suits them fine.

In fact, if 70 to 90 percent of Third World immigrants voted GOP, the Democrats would be clamoring to admit those reliably socialistic Norwegians.